Rule 37 · Seventh Schedule
Continuous proof that your fire systems actually work.
The Delhi Fire Service rules no longer accept a once-a-year look at the pump room. An Automated Continuous Monitoring System watches the twenty mandated points around the clock and keeps a record — so the declaration you sign is backed by evidence, not by hope.
Seventh Schedule — monitored points
- Hydrant — 5 pumps, riser pressure, diesel level, MCC power7
- Sprinkler — pump run, MCC power, riser below 5 bar3
- Fire water tanks — underground and overhead levels2
- Detection & PA — panel, battery, call points, PA fault5
- Pressurisation & exhaust — staircase, lift lobby, basement3
Total20 points
The building, not the box
Where the twenty points actually live.
Most of them are nowhere near the fire panel. Choose a level to see what has to be monitored there, and how the Schedule says it must be sensed.
Pump room
10 pointsWhat changed
The obligation is already in force.
This is not a proposal or a draft. It is a notified amendment to the Delhi Fire Service Rules, and the ACMS provisions have commenced.
- The instrument
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Delhi Fire Service (Amendment) Rules
Notified in the Delhi Gazette (Extraordinary, Part IV) No. 143, by order of the Lt. Governor, NCT of Delhi. The ACMS obligation sits in Rule 37, and the technical specification in the Seventh Schedule.
- Who it catches
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Rule 27(2)–(12) occupancies
Mid- and high-rise residential, hotels, schools, hospitals, every assembly building, offices, malls, industrial and storage above 250 m², all hazardous occupancies above 100 m², and underground structures.
See the full threshold table → - What it demands
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Twenty points, mode fixed
The Schedule does not merely list what to watch. For each point it fixes how it must be sensed — differential pressure across a pump, a voltage sensor at the MCC, an ultrasonic level device, volt-free contacts from the panel.
See all twenty points →
How it works
Field signal to filed record.
Five stages, each one auditable. Nothing in the chain reaches back into your fire systems.
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01
Field sensing
DP switches, level, pressure, voltage, panel contacts
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02
Isolated I/O
Opto-isolated modules on an RS-485 Modbus trunk
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03
Edge gateway
Polls, timestamps, buffers through a link outage
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04
Monitoring cloud
Rules, escalation, watchdog, hash-chained event log
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05
People & records
Owner, auditor, maintainer — each sees only their scope
It keeps watching when the line drops
The gateway holds its own clock and buffers readings locally, so a broadband outage becomes a gap that is recorded and then backfilled — not a silent hole in the record.
The log cannot be quietly edited
Every event, acknowledgement, configuration change and maintenance inhibit is written into a hash-chained record. An integrity check will show if an earlier row was altered after the fact.
Silence is itself a fault
A watchdog expects each gateway to check in on a fixed cycle. A unit that stops reporting is raised as a fault in its own right, because an unplugged monitor must never look the same as a healthy building.
Design boundary
ACMS observes. It never operates.
The system has no authority over your fire-safety equipment. It does not start or stop a pump, reset a panel, command a fan, or release a suppression system. It is a witness, not an actuator — and it is not a replacement for the detection, alarm and suppression systems the building is already required to have. This boundary is deliberate. A monitoring device that can also operate plant introduces a new failure mode into a life-safety installation, and that is not a trade worth making.
The compliance gates
The Schedule is specific about the machine, too.
Beyond what to monitor, it fixes how the system must behave. Miss any one of these and the installation is not compliant, however good the dashboard looks.
| Requirement | What the Schedule fixes |
|---|---|
| Transport | MQTTS — MQTT over TLS — machine-to-machine to the cloud portal, in real time. |
| Connectivity | 4G or 5G and above, or Ethernet, or Wi-Fi. |
| Reporting cadence | The gateway pushes data to the cloud every minute. |
| Backup power | UPS with up to seven hours of backup — so the monitor outlives a power cut and can report that the mains failed. |
| Timestamping | A real-time clock on the gateway, stamping every record. |
| Local buffer | At least 10,000 event logs held on the gateway, so nothing is lost during a comms outage. |
| Watchdog | If the cloud receives nothing for more than 15 minutes, it must raise an alarm itself. Silence is treated as a fault. |
| Alerting | SMS and email alerts in real time, to the owner or occupier and the engaged fire safety auditor. |
| Reporting | The portal must produce both a data report and an alarm report. |
| Storage | Events stored in an open-source database. |
| Availability | Uptime of 99% or better. |
| Phase II hook | Provision to forward only critical alarms — pump power failure, low hydrant and sprinkler pressure, fire and fault conditions — to the fire service. |
Read the rule yourself
The gazette notification, as published. We would rather you checked our reading of it than took our word — everything on this page comes from this document.
Being straight with you
What the rule still leaves open.
Anyone selling you certainty on these points is selling you something they do not have.
The cyber-security protocols
The Schedule requires compliance with technical standards and cyber-security protocols as may be notified by the Director. Some of that detail has not been published yet, so any system in the market today is built to the Schedule as it stands and may need to be updated when it is.
The Phase II interface
Phase II forwards critical alarms to the fire service. The system must be built ready for it, but the receiving interface does not exist publicly yet, so nobody can demonstrate a live connection to it today.
Vendor approval
We are not aware of any published empanelment or approval scheme for ACMS suppliers. If you are told a system is "government approved", ask to see the approval — we would genuinely like to read it too.
The engagement
What we supply.
Whole-scope, from the first walk of the pump room to the record your auditor reads.
Compliance site survey
We walk the building with the Seventh Schedule in hand and establish, point by point, what already gives a usable signal and what does not. This is where scope and price come from — and it is genuinely needed, because in most existing buildings roughly a third to a half of the twenty points already have something to read, and the rest need a sensor added.
Field instrumentation
Differential-pressure switches across pumps, pressure transmitters on risers, ultrasonic level devices on fire water tanks, voltage sensing at the motor control centre, air-proving switches on pressurisation and exhaust fans, and volt-free contacts taken from the fire and PA panels.
Edge gateway and I/O
Opto-isolated input modules on an RS-485 Modbus trunk, into a gateway that timestamps locally, holds readings through a network outage, and carries its own battery backing so a mains failure does not blind the system at the very moment it matters most.
Cloud, dashboard and roles
A live status view per building and per tower, an event history, maintenance inhibit so planned work does not bury the log in noise, and separate access for the owner or RWA, the engaged fire safety auditor, and the maintenance contractor — each seeing only what belongs to them.
Records for the annual declaration
The continuous record, the event history and the integrity check exist so that the yearly declaration about your fire and life-safety systems rests on machine evidence. Alert routing and escalation are configured per building and per role during commissioning.
The platform
Built, working, and ready to put on a building.
Not a specification or a plan. The cloud, the dashboard, the roles, the event history and the integrity checking are working software, and they have been through independent security review.
A view per building
Project, tower and node, so a portfolio of buildings and a single society both read sensibly. Points are configured to what the building actually has, not to a fixed template.
Three roles, separate scopes
The owner or association, the engaged fire safety auditor, and the maintenance contractor each get their own login. An auditor sees the buildings they are engaged on and no others.
Maintenance without noise
Equipment can be inhibited for planned work, so a scheduled pump service does not bury the record in alarms — and the inhibit itself is logged, with who set it and when.
Questions
Asked often.
What does ACMS stand for?
Automated Continuous Monitoring System. The name comes from the rule itself — it is the term the Seventh Schedule uses for the system a building must install.
Can we use our existing fire alarm panel?
Partly, and this is worth being precise about. Nearly every fire panel offers volt-free fire and fault contacts, and ACMS reads those directly. But several of the twenty points — fire water tank level, staircase pressurisation air proving, basement exhaust proving, diesel day-tank level, PA fault — usually have nothing to read in an older building, and a sensor has to be added.
Anyone who tells you a monitoring system simply plugs into what you already have has not surveyed your building.
Does it take control of our pumps or panels?
No, and it is built so that it cannot. ACMS is monitoring-only: status flows out of the building, and no command flows back in. It does not operate equipment and it does not replace your detection, alarm or suppression systems.
What does it cost?
It depends on the building, and any firm who quotes you a number before walking your pump room is guessing. The count of pumps, tanks, risers, staircases and panels differs from building to building, and so does how many of the twenty points already have a usable signal. We survey first, then quote.
Who sees the data?
The building owner or association, the fire safety auditor engaged for that building, and the maintenance contractor — each with their own login and their own scope. An auditor sees the buildings they are engaged on and no others.
How long does installation take?
That follows the survey. The variable is not the gateway or the software — it is cable routes and how many new sensors your building needs, particularly at the tanks and the pressurisation fans, which are often the furthest points from the panel room.
Next step
Start with a survey, not a quotation.
We will walk your building against the twenty points and tell you where you stand — including the points you already satisfy. You will get a scope you can actually compare against other quotes.